Humanity on Edea was like a small boat being tossed around in an ocean storm, this storm was called all of the various monsters and demi-humans. Vampires, Lycanthropes, Revenant, and many more, it was enough that David was planning on bringing out one of the best tools from Edea for finding imposters. It was a simple enchantment, for detecting the attribute of mana that a person possessed. 

 

Mana could be used in place of fingerprints, but it also acted like DNA, most humans had a very similar mana pattern to each other. This idea had originated from the elves who had built an enchantment into their gates that prevented anyone but elves from entering. These enchantments were removed from some ruins and were later modified, it then became the basis for the mana detection enchantment.

 

“The Light of Yato,” he muttered.

 

David had a ring of metal that was large enough to be a bracelet, all along the metal ring were symbols that made up a complex enchantment. After placing the metal ring on the wooden table in front of him, he took a magic stone from his bag and set it inside the ring of metal. He placed his hands on both sides of the ring and pushed his mana inside of it. 

 

David was sitting at a wooden chair he had borrowed from the dining room and behind him, Lena was sitting on the bed that the two had slept on. The table was taken from Lena’s room and was formerly her desk, his tools were all around the table and bed. The windows were covered with sheets of different colors to block anyone from looking in, this was in case they were being spied on by something.

 

“I thought that we had plenty of magic stones, I was wrong Princess, we will need a lot more of them,” David commented. “Things are just moving so much faster than I ever expected.”

 

David suddenly felt something press against his forehead and looked over to see that Lena was using a rag to wipe the sweat off his face.

 

“We can get more of them.” She told him.

 

“I know, monsters will never be in short supply, but that is counting chickens before we can hatch them,” David said.

 

David felt her hand retreat with the rag, then she began to wipe down the back of his neck, she did it slowly and meticulously. It had a calming effect on him as he was preparing to carve the magic stone. 

 

“We survived the hospital and the helicopter crash.’ She said.

 

David paused and looked over at his left arm, he could see the wrapping that Lena had made for him to cover the burns. This was the cost he had to pay to escape that nightmare of a place and to use magic that was way above his level. A first layer was still human, with none of the true benefits of having mana.

 

“Alright, let’s do this,” David said.

 

The ring worked to equalize the mana that was inside of the stone with the atmosphere around it. This created a field where the slightest change in mana would allow you to move the stone around like it was liquid. This was using the mana that was inside of the stone to help aid in carving it and it is the only way that David was able to do it in the first place.

 

When it came to taking in mana through methods like meditation, monsters reigned supreme and humans were slow. The stone in front of David was already in the second layer, this was from a rabbit they had killed to make food along the way. Humans were bad at taking in mana directly from food like monsters or magical plants. 

 

“Damnit!” David cursed.

 

The thread of mana he was using to carve the enchantment had broken, this caused him to have to try to continue from where he stopped. The lines of his enchantment needed to be within a certain scale to match the effect that he wanted. Using his mana to create a new thread of mana, he tried to get it where he left off but was unable to get it into the carved section correctly.

 

“Shit, I ruined it!” David sighed.

 

Reaching into the enclosure with his bandaged arm, he began to take in as much of the mana that he could. When he messed up with the enchantment, he put too much pressure on the stone out of panic and caused it to crack. This was causing all of the mana to start leaking out of the stone, so David was trying to take some in before the mana level reduced too much.

David sighed out sadly as he only managed to take in a little bit of mana before he reached his limits. He also began to store some of it in his arm but it soon gave him a pinching feeling like ants were crawling around on it. This was the natural ability of it to use mana to heal itself, his tight burnt skin was slowly being loosened, however, he knew it would never return to normal again.

 

“Alright, time to try with a dog’s stone, let’s see if man’s best friend will give me some luck.” He muttered as he replaced the broken stone with a fresh one. 

 

The broken magical stone looked cloudy, and it was a dark and dull gray with very little luster, this was in contrast to the new one that was see-through in a light purple color. David then had to wait several minutes for the mana inside the ring to equalize with the stone. Lena currently had her hands on his shoulders and was applying light pressure, he wasn’t sure when she had switched to this, but it was comforting.

 

Taking a deep breath he formed a magical thread using his mana, now that he had taken so much of it in, he didn’t feel as shaky. This was a common condition that every single person who used mana constantly had to deal with, mana addiction. Enchanters had it the worst of any class, that was because they constantly used large amounts of mana-creating tools, and they usually could only take mana in from magic stones.

 

The benefit of natural meditation over a long period was that you never had to worry about mana becoming the thing that muddled your thoughts. Currently, he was only at the lowest levels of it, as long as he was careful and if he was able to get his hands on various magical herbs then he could easily prevent this condition from becoming a problem. There were also several different therapy and training methods that Edeans had developed over a long period of coping with mana.

 

David cleared his muddled thoughts and plunged the thread into the stone, he then began to quickly carve away the first symbol he needed. Getting the size and shape right, he moved onto the second and was thrilled when it went as planned, this boost of confidence led him to start finishing one after another. David didn’t allow himself to get impatient, this time he tried to take as much time as he needed to.

 

Finishing the last symbol he could see on the face of the stone, he created a flat piece of mana and used it to turn the stone on the wood table. Due to the mana density inside of the ring, the magic stone acted like it was stuck in thick oil or tar. This made it much easier to move it around as he carved into it.

 

Carving in the final symbol with his thread of mana, he reached his hand into the ring and pulled the magic stone out.  Inspecting it in his hand, he could see various hairlike symbols carved into the glass-like substance. The entire thing was radiating a dim light, but it wasn’t causing shadows to be cast as a normal light.

 

Beneath David’s feet was a humanoid projection of himself that was shadow-like attached to his feet. It was a light blue color, Lena had one of these shadows that were slightly darker in shade attached to her feet. These were called mana tinges, and most sentient creatures that possessed mana tended to produce this color. 

 

“Look, we are both humans.” He told her. “Before this enchantment was discovered, humans couldn’t gather in the large numbers that we did before the apocalypse. Too many demihumans have a terrifying ability to spread inside of cities and towns. Vampires can inject their blood into a target to create a subordinate that will always be weaker, the issue is that these usually suffer a high fever during the transformation and often suffer brain damage.”

 

In the modern world, this would be easy enough to solve just by sticking the body inside of a refrigerator. David could already imagine Marco infecting hundreds of people one by one and using them to control the population of Denver. No one could be turned into a demihuman unwillingly, so the vampire virus came up with a sneaky way around it.

 

It will cause its target tremendous pain, as well as fever and delusions, enough that the target will accept this change and not be able to fight it. Then it will be allowed to transform the target into a man-eater who will retain his memories, but almost none of their past emotions. This is why they are so dangerous in places where they can easily replace people, sunscreen can also make up for some of their photosensitivity. 

 

David took this magic stone that was emitting light and slowly placed it inside of a metal flashlight body, this flashlight was then wrapped in thick plastic, and the end had been drilled out using a drill press. A wooden shaft for a shovel had been fitted onto the end since it was a good hardwood, and another magic stone was inserted into what was used to hold the battery. The top of this battery tray had been replaced with an enchanted metal plate, copper wires extended out from this plate through the body of the flashlight.

 

The other side of this flashlight was also heavily modified and enchanted, it had a metal shaft that slotted over the wood to add reinforcement. An ax head was welded onto one side, and a hammerhead was welded to the back, with a sharp spike extending from the end of the pole. This used the same enchantment that his machete did, and a magic stone was sitting inside of the socket, it was essentially a poleaxe(AN:1) with an electric baton attached to one end.

 

David smiled sadly as he saw this expenditure of magic stones, it had cost him 3 of them just to make this new weapon. Soon he would be increasing to the second layer, so he would need to retire his mace and machete for something better. The main reason why he needed to carve the magical stone, had to do with differences in how enchanting worked.

 

Without things like truesilver or enchanted silver, there weren’t any other materials he had but magic stones that were good at projecting mana similar to a spell. All of the weapons he had built used enchantments that acted much like abilities did, only the mana detector he installed inside of the flashlight needed to be able to extend its power outside of the weapon. This was so it could paint the walls with the tinge of his target's mana. 

 

“This is another weapon I stole from inquisitors in that other world, they call it the heretics bane, although mine is more cobbled together than theirs would have been,” David told the blonde woman behind him. “I hate swords, and I just don’t know why. Whenever I think about them it just doesn’t feel right. I think it was because my friend Trey used to thrash me with two short swords whenever we were swinging foam weapons.”

 

“Then what did you want the broken revolver for?” She asked him, as she pointed to another weapon he was making.

 

David reached over and grabbed the revolver he had taken, the barrel had been part of the frame, and it had a misfire that bent it badly. This didn’t matter to David though as he just ground it off using an angle grinder, he then took a large combat knife that boasted a wicked blade called a California clip(AN:2) and attached it to this revolver body. An enchantment was ground into the blade, but it would just allow the spell to pass through it, the silver was mixed with pieces of ground-up magic stone and silver that were heated with a blowtorch to mix it.

“My dad left most of his guns with Dane, at least he left all of the ones he went shooting for fun, or hunting since they always went together and Dane had a bigger gun safe anyway,” David explained. “This means we don’t have shit here for firearms except for the AR15 that my dad has for self-defense and my mom’s M1911 chambered to 45. We just don’t have many weapons here, and all of the bullets for the guns that my dad left at Dane’s house were stripped for their gunpowder. This is how they fired the cannon on the tank, if he had his hunting rifles then that Ursok would have been dead in front of that wall.”

 

“That doesn’t answer my question.” She reminded him, she was still massaging his shoulders.

 

David suddenly realized that the woman behind him seemed to have a terrifying ability, he suddenly tried to recall a time that he could have slept with a woman and not felt lust for her. Even now with what she was doing, he suddenly felt the same feeling he did when he saw his father and mother together. This caused his horror when he looked back at the face of the woman behind him, what he saw was that gentle smile that reminded him of a doll.

 

Her eyes just aren’t right, I never know what she is thinking, I almost expected her to be some kind of demi-human after being in the hospital for so long.

 

David turned back as he grabbed a second larger ring and placed it around the first one he had placed on the table. Reaching over onto his desk he brushed away a pile of screws and grabbed a set of square bars, he then took the two metal rings and placed them in an X shape, and pushed the square rods through to lock them in position. He then reached over and grabbed a small glass plate that his mother used for lighting candles and set it into the holder that was made from the two rings, they fit almost perfectly together.

 

“Most wands or magical staffs use a magical stone or crystal that is enchanted to cast a spell when it is provided mana,” David explained. “Only having a single spell that you rely on to just spam your target to death is utterly foolish, it is best to be able to change it.”

 

David grabbed a magical stone that was in the third layer, it was from a large dog they had killed that was in the third layer. David then took a pair of calipers, and a metal slug that he had already checked against the weapon and it filled the chamber. David then took a magic stone from a creature that was in the third layer, it was one of the stronger ones they had come across and placed it on the plate.

 

“You haven’t been able to do much with your current weapons, so I decided to make this for you,” David said. “This is going to be a modified wand, the revolver body is now just to change the spell that it is using, some mages liked contraptions like this and had some that could hold upwards of thirty to forty spells at once. Those mages had insane reserves of mana and could just spam their spells at enemies like madmen until they collapsed.”

 

“Is that what you think of me…” She asked with a shaking voice.

 

“What?! No! I was just recalling some information, now please, I need to concentrate!” David went back and forth between the woman massaging his shoulders and the stone that was slowly lifting into the air. “Watch this, it is cool!”

 

David suddenly felt the weight on his shoulders increase, and then he felt two firm yet soft bulges begin to encircle his head.

 

“I am watching,” she said, causing the masses on David’s head to vibrate with her voice.

 

David had to take several deep breaths to calm himself down as he pushed his mana inside of the rings and began to spin the stone around inside of it rapidly, he then began to harden and flatten this mana and press down on the stone and flatten it out. His mana began draining rapidly, as he continued to widen out the magical stone into a rectangle with two domed heads, one on each side. Alternating between spinning and squeezing, he was soon able to check it with the calipers.

 

This expenditure was flagging his mana, it was draining faster than he had imagined it would. His arm that had been busy healing was once again like a barren desert, and he was finding that his mana was quickly flagging. David could only sigh unhappily as he was forced to pause what he was doing and grab a magic stone, he then began drawing the mana from it into his arm. 

 

Once his arm was filled up again he set the partially used stone to the side, and waited for the pain to start to subside, this time was much worse than before. David had to wait a full minute before his hand stopped shaking, and he could place it near the ring again and begin feeding his mana back into the field. The time was simple and he just made a couple of measurements and used his mana to make a thin thread, he then used it to slice through the stone instantly and sever it into two parts.

 

Reaching over quickly, he took a soldering iron and began to solder a silver base to both sections of the magical stone. This base matched the rim of a bullet and would prevent the stone from sliding out of the cylinder. David then set one of these bullets to the side as he tried to ignore the weight on the back of his head.

 

“What spells do you want, I think I can make you three in total after I am done making modifications to our weapons,” David asked.

 

“Ice, lightning, and fire.” She said.

 

“Alright, I can do that. These will be better than what we have been using, but you probably will only be able to use it a couple of times.” David told her, as he began to carve symbols into the magical core made bullet. “I kind of like bunker-kun, I think I am going to modify him again. I am going to make a third magical bullet and fit it inside of bunker-kun after I drill a hole into this railroad spike. Then I can also use it as a magical cannon if I don’t decide to spike something to death.”

 

“Why did we need to upgrade our weapons again?” She asked.

 

“We are going hunting, I think that someone among this group isn’t a human,” David said.

 

“What do you think they are?” She asked.

 

David looked back at her but he didn’t speak, he had to be careful not to let her boobs smother his face. He was shocked at how much bigger and fuller they had become, he was shocked he hadn’t realized how much she filled out. David had to pause, as his brain rebooted and his pants tightened, he then pointed to a piece of paper with a single word.

 

‘Souldrinking Demon’